---
title: "Onboarding"
description: "Learn how to templatize your agents on our marketplace."
icon: "store"
---
When posting an agency on our marketplace, you can define a custom `OnboardingTool` to allow end users to customize your agents for their own businesses.

## Why Customization is Important?

When building AI agents, you might encounter clients who want to deploy agents for the same roles.

For example, almost every company employs an **accountant**. And so, if you built an accounting agent for one company, you might want to reuse it later.

However, although the **general process** for the same role across various companies is similar, the **specific process** is always unique. 

For example, one company might do accounting **weekly**, another one **monthly**. One company might use **Xero**, another one **Quick books**. One company prefers to send invoices via **email**, another one via their **customer portal**, and so on. 

As you can see, **even if you built an agent for the same role at one company, it’s not gonna be useful at another company**. 

## How Agencii Solves Agent Onboarding

On our platform, we tackle this issue by creating a custom `OnboardingTool` class. 

Inside this tool class, you can define all the parameters that you need in order to customize your agents before deployment. 

For our accounting agent above, for example, this class might look like this:

```python
from agency_swarm.tools import BaseTool
from pydantic import Field
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from typing import Literal

load_dotenv()

class OnboardingTool(BaseTool):
    """
    Customizes the accounting agent based on the client's specific accounting processes, 
    software, and preferences before deployment.
    """
    
    agent_name: str = Field(
        ..., 
        description="Name of your accounting agent visible to the user."
    )
    business_overview: str = Field(
        ..., 
        description="Brief business overview including industry, size, and accounting needs."
    )
    accounting_frequency: Literal["weekly", "monthly", "quarterly"] = Field(
        ..., 
        description="How often accounting tasks should be performed."
    )
    accounting_software: Literal["xero", "quickbooks", "freshbooks", "sage", "other"] = Field(
        ..., 
        description="The accounting software platform the client uses."
    )
    invoice_delivery_method: Literal["email", "customer_portal", "both"] = Field(
        ..., 
        description="Preferred method for sending invoices to clients."
    )

    def run(self):
        """
        Programmatically writes a JSON config containing all user-provided accounting parameters
        to onboarding_config.json, in the exact same directory as this tool file.
        """
        import json

        # Get tool directory path
        tool_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
        config_path = os.path.join(tool_dir, "onboarding_config.json")

        # Dynamically collect all pydantic model fields into a dict
        config = self.model_dump()

        # Write config file
        try:
            with open(config_path, "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
                json.dump(config, f, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False)
            return f"Accounting agent configuration created at: {config_path}"
        except Exception as e:
            return f"Error writing config file: {str(e)}"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Test with sample accounting client data
    tool = OnboardingTool(
        agent_name="Acme Corp Accounting Agent",
        business_overview="Mid-size manufacturing company with 50 employees.",
        accounting_frequency="monthly",
        accounting_software="xero",
        invoice_delivery_method="customer_portal"
    )
    print(tool.run())
```

**Key things to note**:

- `OnboardingTool` must extend `BaseTool` class.
- File name must be `onboarding_tool.py`
- The file needs to be placed in the **repository root directory**.
- All field descriptions will be displayed during the onboarding process on our platform.
- We will replace “_” with spaces, capitalize fields names and display them as titles, unless you `ui:title` parameter is provided.

## How This Will Look On Agencii

When users deploy your agents from the marketplace, we will parse this class into a JSON schema and display it as a form:

![onboarding form example](/images/platform/onboarding_form.png)

All that the user who wants to deploy your agency needs to do is simply fill out this form! That's it!

## Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create Your Own Agent Onboarding Form 

1. **Copy our template and place it in `onboarding_tool.py` file in the root directory:**
    
    ```python
    from agency_swarm.tools import BaseTool
    from pydantic import Field
    import os
    from dotenv import load_dotenv
    from typing import Literal
    
    load_dotenv()
    
    class OnboardingTool(BaseTool):
        """
        Customizes your agent based on client-specific requirements before deployment.
        Replace the fields below with parameters relevant to your use case.
        """
        
        # String fields - use for names, descriptions, and text inputs
        agent_name: str = Field(
            ..., 
            description="Name of your agent visible to the user."
        )
        business_overview: str = Field(
            ..., 
            description="Brief overview of the client's business or requirements."
        )
        # String fields for additional context
        additional_notes: str = Field(
            ..., 
            description="Any additional notes or special requirements for the agent."
        )
    
        def run(self):
            """
            Saves the configuration as a Python file with a config object
            """
            import json
    
            tool_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
            config_path = os.path.join(tool_dir, "onboarding_config.py")
    
            config = self.model_dump()
    
            try:
                # Generate Python code with the config as a dictionary
                python_code = f"# Auto-generated onboarding configuration\n\nconfig = {json.dumps(config, indent=4)}\n"
                
                with open(config_path, "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
                    f.write(python_code)
                return f"Configuration saved at: {config_path}\n\nYou can now import it with:\nfrom onboarding_config import config"
            except Exception as e:
                return f"Error writing config file: {str(e)}"
    
    if __name__ == "__main__":
        tool = OnboardingTool(
            agent_name="Example Agent",
            business_overview="Example business description",
            file_ids=[],
            additional_notes="Any special requirements go here"
        )
        print(tool.run())
    ```
    
2. Add your own specific fields with pydantic that are required to fine-tune your agents:
    
    ```python
    # Example: Adding Literal field (dropdown menu)
    from typing import Literal
    
    class OnboardingTool(BaseTool):
    
    		# ...
        
        # Literal field - creates a dropdown with predefined options
    		 model: Literal["gpt-4o", "gpt-5-mini", "gpt-5"] = Field(
            ...,
            description="Select the AI model to use for the agent."
        )
        
        # ...
    ```
    
3. **Execute the tool file:**
    
    ```python
    python onboarding_tool.py
    ```
    
    This will generate `onboarding_config.py` next to your onboarding tool file.
    
    <aside>
    ❗
    
    In most cases, you don’t need to change the `run` method. You can simply use the values from `config.py` in your code. (See steps below)
    
    </aside>
    
4. **Customize your agents**
    
    Use the values from the generated [config.py](http://config.py) file in your code to customize your agents:
    
    ```python
    from agency_swarm import Agent
    from onboarding_config import config
    import os
    
    current_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
    instructions_path = os.path.join(current_dir, "instructions.md")
    
    def render_instructions():
        with open(instructions_path, "r") as file:
            instructions = file.read()
    
        instructions = instructions.format(
            agent_name=config["agent_name"],
            business_overview=config["business_overview"],
            additional_notes=config["additional_notes"]
        )
        return instructions
    
    rag_agent = Agent(
        name=onboarding_config["agent_name"],
        description=onboarding_config["agent_description"],
        instructions=render_instructions(),
        files_folder="./files",
        model=config["model"],
    )
    ```
    
    In this example we:
    
    - Customized the instructions.
    - Customized the model.
5. Deploy and list on marketplace
    1. Deploy your agent as usual, just make sure to commit the default `onboarding_config`for your own account.
    2. Test the agency is working as expected on your account first.
    3. List your agent on our marketplace by going to https://agencii.ai/marketplace/

That’s it! This is how simple it is to customize and scale your agents with our platform.

## Advanced Fields & Parameters

We use [react-jsonschema-form](https://react-jsonschema-form.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) to render the onboarding form.

You can use the following uiSchema parameters to customize the form:

- `ui:widget`: controls which UI component is used for the field. (e.g. `text`, `textarea`, etc.)
- `ui:options`: controls widget-specific options (e.g. `rows`, `inputType`, `label`, etc.).
- `ui:title`: overrides the field’s title.
- `ui:description`: overrides the field’s description.
- `ui:readonly`: makes the field read-only.
- `ui:disabled`: disables user interaction entirely.
- `required`: belongs in the **JSON schema**, not the uiSchema.

### File Uploads

To upload your files, you must add `"x-file-upload-path"` , and the type of the field must be set `list[str]` .

```python
# List fields - use for multiple selections or file uploads
accountant_agent_knowledge: list[str] = Field(
    ...,
    description="Files that accountant agent must have as knowledge.",
		json_schema_extra={
            "x-file-upload-path": "./accountant_agent/files",           # standard JSON Schema
        },
)
```

After user uploads the files, they will be added to `./accountant_agent/files` folder.

### Multiline Text Inputs

`ui:widget` parameter in `json_schema_extra` controls UI component displayed in the onboarding form

```python
additional_notes: Optional[str] = Field(
    None, 
    description="Any additional notes for the agent to go into prompt.",
    json_schema_extra={
        "ui:widget": "textarea",
    },
)
```

## A Note on Form Updates

- If you push a change to the form, **the users of your agents will be required to re-enter any new and updated fields**. Do this with caution!
- The summary of the commit that triggered the update will be displayed to the user in the form as the reason for the update.
- The new version won’t be deployed for the users until they complete an onboarding form.